Kidnap, Credibility, and The Collector
Saul Levmore*
The practice, and then the criminal law, of kidnapping enjoys a long history.
There was bride kidnapping by those who sought not to pay, or simply could not afford,
bride-prices. There have been abductions in advance of enslavement, sale, and
impressment to military service or piracy, as well as some designed to put heirs and other
rivals out of the way. There was and remains hostage-taking by repeat players seeking
political or commercial gain. There is abduction for the purpose of rape or murder, in
which case the kidnap label is usually dropped, as it is where the nabbing is by a parent
dissatisfied with the law’s award of child custody. And then there is ransom kidnapping,
the crime that most comes to mind when the more general term is used. Kidnapping, and
especially ransom kidnapping, imposes enormous costs on victims and potential victims
and yet, setting aside the case where the abducted party colludes with the kidnapper, the
perpetrator is rarely successful. It is a difficult transaction to complete, and the crime
carries a severe penalty.
Ransom kidnapping, like its cousins, blackmail and extortion, is essentially a
threat. Its infrequent success is best traced to the difficulty the kidnapper experiences in
avoiding apprehension, and not to the inherent incredibility of the threat. Nevertheless,
because the crime imposes great costs, especially when it involves a child, it continues to
capture popular as well as literary attention. It is not as common a subject of detective
novels or literary classics as is murder or rape, perhaps because it is less often successful
or, more likely, because it is especially unlikely to occur in serial fashion. Many murders
and rapes are unsolved and many perpetrators of these crimes need to be apprehended or
they will strike again. The same cannot be said of kidnapping, where copycat crimes are
probably more of a risk than are serial perpetrators. For these and other reasons,
kidnapping is under-theorized, and one goal of this essay is to think through the threat it
represents.
Literature can play a role in reforming law, in developing public opinion about the
operation of a legal system, and in exploring the real or imagined characteristics of
wrongdoers and their victims. It has surely performed these roles with respect to murder,
*
William B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago Law School. I am grateful for
discussions with Martha Nussbaum and for excellent research by Lingfeng Li.
Comments welcome: s-levmore@uchicago.edu
rape, and the treatment and punishment of those arrested and convicted for these crimes.
Early novels about kidnapping focused on the struggles and eventual triumphs of victims
who were abducted by competitors who wished them far out of the way.1 The cornerstone
of the present essay, however, is John Fowles’ chilling novel, The Collector, about an
abductor and kidnapper2 who seeks not distance, but rather closeness and affection. This
1963 British novel is about class, sex, and possession, with love entirely absent from the
characters’ lives. Inasmuch as the abductor seeks benefits that we associate with
consensual relationships, the novel quickly focuses attention on the ways in which people
control or even possess one another. In turn, one wonders at the dividing line between
the controlling behaviors and relationships that are criminalized and those that are
enabled or even celebrated. Along the way and in uncanny fashion, The Collector
suggests many interesting features of threats and of kidnapping in particular.
*
*
*
The Collector is not a detective novel. It describes a crime from the perspective of
the wrongdoer, as narrator, and then from that of the victim, through her diary. The
narrator and abductor, Frederick Clegg, stalks Miranda Grey, an art student, and regards
her as he would a beautiful butterfly. Clegg collects butterflies, and is accustomed to
collecting at the expense of his prey’s freedom. He uses his winnings from a betting pool
to buy a van and a secluded country house, and then abducts Miranda by force as well as
deceit. She recognizes him because his picture was in the newspaper when he won the
pool, and she sees through his claim that he is an agent of another. He seems surprised
that she is an outraged captive rather than a willing guest in the cocoon he has prepared,
and whom he tries to please with small purchases. She categorizes him as a scientist, who
collects things and takes artless photographs, and herself as an artist who, the reader
understands, would eventually be at the mercy of other collectors were she to pursue that
line of work.
1
The best known of these are ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, KIDNAPPED (1886) and ALEXANDRE DUMAS,
THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (1844). NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, FANSHAWE (1828) is about bride
kidnapping and monetary gain, and not about rival clans where bride kidnapping might amount to repeat
trading.
2
I use the terms abductor and kidnapper interchangeably, though the discussion quickly attends to the line
separating false imprisonment, often a misdemeanor, from kidnapping. See infra note 11and accompanying
text.
2
Miranda tries to escape by pretending to have appendicitis, by secreting a note to
the outside world, and by digging her way out of thick walls and locked doors. These
attempts fail. She bargains with Clegg3 and secures a promise from him that he will
release her after one month. On what was to be the last night of captivity, and armed with
gifts, he proposes marriage. When she refuses, he reveals that he will not release her. She
again tries to escape and, after subduing her with chloroform, he photographs her in a
state of undress. Subsequently, and more desperate, she tries to kill him and, when that
fails, seduce him. He takes the first in stride and is repulsed by the second. When
Miranda takes ill, Clegg is afraid to call in a doctor, and feels justified in his inaction.
We then read Miranda’s diary, which tells of the captivity from her point of view,
and largely confirms what we know from Clegg’s narration. The diary reveals some
things the abductor does not know, including Miranda’s past relationship with G.P., a
painter, mentor, and sophisticate who is two decades older than she. He was critical of
her family and her taste in art, and she was eager for his approval. Their relationship
ended after he confessed a romantic interest in her, but now, if freed, she plans to
rekindle the connection and marry him.
Clegg’s narrative resumes in the novel’s final sections. He realizes that Miranda is
quite ill, but he is unable to obtain help from a pharmacist. He goes to a doctor whom he
had earlier eschewed, but Clegg is frightened off by a police officer. Miranda dies after
calling out in her delirium for G.P.; Clegg understands this to be a call for a doctor, or
general practitioner. Clegg thinks of suicide, and fantasizes about a Romeo and Juliet
conclusion. He arises the next day with a fresh view, and decides that his error was in
kidnapping someone from a higher social class. He knows better now and, with Miranda
disposed of, he has his eye on a more appropriate woman whom he has seen working in
town behind the candy counter at a Woolworth’s. She reminds him of Miranda, though
not as pretty and, of course, more of his own social class. The novel ends with Clegg’s
musing, “this time it won’t be for love, it would be just for the interest of the thing”
(305).
*
*
*
3
I will refer to him by his surname (and yet the victim by her given name) because Clegg alters his given
name, perhaps to obscure his identity. JOHN FOWLES, THE COLLECTOR 37 (Little Brown 1963). Citations
are to the Back Bay paperback edition.
3
Only at the very end of Miranda’s captivity is Clegg under pressure. Although
there are advertisements asking about the missing art student, there is no indication of a
manhunt or of widespread concern about kidnap or sexual assault. Nor does Miranda
wonder whether her family, G.P., or her other friends are out looking for her. When
Clegg is in town, there is no evidence that citizens are in fear of a serial kidnapper. The
reader feels greater urgency for a search than do Miranda’s neighbors and fellow
students. The reader’s fears substitute for those unmentioned in the novel. The Collector
is like most detective novels in its focus on the criminal and the victim, as it sets aside the
costs imposed by criminals on those who fear becoming the victims of future crimes.4
These precaution costs on the part of potential victims may well form the most important
reason to criminalize theft and abduction, and certainly to impose extreme punishments
on many felons. The rapist and kidnapper not only traumatize their direct victims but also
chill the behavior of many others who learn of the crimes and fear that they too will be
victimized; indeed, law might work harder to overcome the collective action problem
among potential victims who fear crime.5 There is a good case to be made for calibrating
the punishments meted out by criminal law to include consideration of these costs. For
example, a street assault is not usually regarded as terribly serious, but if precaution costs
were included in the calculus, the assailant might receive a more severe penalty than an
embezzler. Moreover, the special circumstances that judges assess in determining the
punishment for the convicted assailant do not include consideration of whether the crime
was one that would cause others special fear. If precaution costs were taken more
seriously, an assault on a stranger would, for example, be punished more severely than an
assault on an acquaintance.
One of the interesting things about ransom kidnapping is that publicized cases of
child kidnapping, most famously the Lindbergh kidnapping in 1932, generated change in
the law. In the aftermath of the Lindbergh episode, kidnapping with an interstate element
became a federal crime.6 As a result, there would be more federal participation in
4
Detective novels have been grouped in three categories. Lawrence M. Friedman & Issachar Rosen-Zvi,
Illegal Fictions: Mystery Novels and the Popular Image of Crime, 48 UCLA Law Review 1411 (2001).
There are those with clues, in which the reader joins Sherlock Holmes, Jane Marple, or another sleuth in a
process of elimination; those that reflect a darker and grittier urban existence (as in the work of Dashiell
Hammett); and those that bring forensic science into the mix. The last subset, extended to include film and
television, often involves serial killers and these stories might be said to reflect the fear and precaution
costs that such criminals impose.
5
For an excellent discussion of precaution costs, and how they ought to be calculated and then reduced, see
Jim Shliferstein, Fear Itself: Secondary Mischief and its Policy Implications (2011) (on file with author).
6
18 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(1) (Federal Kidnapping Act). The law originally provided for capital punishment and
enabled federal authorities to step in once a kidnapper crossed state lines with a victim.
4
investigating kidnaps. There was, however, no sudden literary interest in kidnapping,
although there are detective novels that were influenced by the sensational Lindbergh
event.7 It seems more likely that a spate of earlier kidnaps encouraged the Lindbergh
crime itself. Authors who traded on crime were already aware of the mechanics and
difficulties in carrying out and solving kidnaps. Somewhat similarly, a serial murderer
attracts attention and then stimulates investment by police departments in solving the
crimes. It might also give ideas to potential murderers who lust to kill or crave the
attention normally given to murders. The police might be motivated by the public
relations attached to unsolved and solved crimes, but it is not a stretch to say that the
level of enforcement rises with precaution costs.8 These costs are often hidden, but in the
extreme, as when a serial strangler is thought to be about, the increase in precaution costs
is so great that political pressure is inevitable.
The Collector is a carefully constructed novel and it is likely that the lack of any
signs of widespread concern about Miranda’s absence, and any hints that the police are
closing in on Clegg’s stronghold, is intentional. Precautions and investigation might
distract from the focus on the protagonists’ motives. They might also have detracted from
the metaphor or reality of the title. Clegg is as free to capture and hold Miranda as he is to
catch and pin one of “his” butterflies.9 In neither case are there consequences to the
collector or, for all we know, to the victim’s peers.
*
*
*
The kidnapper who aims to benefit by putting some competitor out of the way or
by collecting a ransom, gaining political advantage, or obtaining the release of prisoners,
seems rational to the normal observer, as does the murderer who wants his victim out of
7
In AGATHA CHRISTIE, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1934), Hercule Poirot deduces that twelve
persons on a train cooperated to murder the true kidnapper of a child. The kidnapper had avoided justice in
the United States. The kidnapping was plainly modeled on the Lindbergh kidnapping, and the plot reflected
general concern at the time about the evidence that had been mustered to convict Bruno Hauptmann.
8
See, e.g., SUSAN KELLY, THE BOSTON STRANGLERS (2002) (amassing evidence that infamous murders in
1962-63 were likely committed by as many as eight separate killers and that police and politicians were
pressured to find a strangler).
9
A number of commentators have compared The Collector to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955). See, e.g.,
Bavjola Shatro, “The Collector” as Experience of Eros and Sexuality in Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” and
John Fowles’ “The Collector,” 8 European Scientific Journal 64-78 (2012). Lolita also involves a kidnap,
though in other respects the novels are quite different. Nabokov was a butterfly expert, but that seems
beside the point unless Fowles, who had an amateur interest in the insect, was inspired by this fact or
making a joke of it. In any event, The Collector is a superior vehicle for thinking about threats and the
difference between criminal kidnapping and other relationships.
5
the way or stands to collect a sum for carrying out the crime. In each of these cases, the
motive is plain. In contrast, the serial murderer who targets strangers captures our
attention because the impulse is unfamiliar. Psychiatrists and police look for patterns in
the choice of victims and the method of killing, and expect to find some connection or
cause in the criminal’s personal life. Occasionally, the serial killer keeps his victims alive
for some time, enjoying his control over them in life as in death. The long-term kidnapper
may share this motive. The kidnapper may want access to sex or simply someone over
whom he can exercise power. In the process, he objectifies his victim. It is difficult to
know whether The Collector presents a typical kidnapper of this sort or, rather, an
unusual specimen. Clegg wants and expects Miranda to like him. He tells himself, and
then her, that he has no chance with her in London, where she would surely ignore him in
favor of members of her own social class (39). He abducts her so that she can get to know
him. She responds in a manner that mirrors basic tenets of criminal law, which is to say
she has been forcibly abducted and cannot possibly develop affection for her abductor. At
times she tries to understand him, occasionally she pities him (108), but mostly and
understandably she loathes him. There are, to be sure, cases where an abducted victim
develops an attachment to her captor, but there is no indication that Clegg is motivated by
an expectation of “capture bonding,” a psychological and perhaps adaptive behavior that
became known as Stockholm Syndrome a decade after The Collector appeared.10
The Collector is disturbing in part because Clegg is not a particularly violent or
cruel captor, though of course he uses force (not to mention chloroform) to abduct and
maintain control over Miranda. He claims to want affection and to win her over, and he is
eager to be respectable and to respect his hostage, at least in his own mind. He announces
himself before entering her room, gives her time to dress, keeps himself clean, dresses for
dinner with her, cooks for her, responds to her needs and desires, converses with her,
buys gifts for her, and makes no attempt to force himself on her sexually. There are times
when she is in control of the relationship – setting aside the obvious fact that she is there
against her will and that he can gag, bind, and knock her out when he pleases. The novel
is known and titled to emphasize the analogy between Clegg’s capture of his precious
butterflies and his treatment of Miranda, but it is plain and far more disturbing to observe
the similarity between their relationship and those experienced within the confines of
10
Capture bonding is not rare. See http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/fbi/stockholm_syndrome.pdf
(FBI estimates it develops in 8% of kidnappings). In an environment in which women were abducted and
brought into rival and violent groups, it may have been adaptive to develop empathy for the captors rather
than to fight. See AZAR GAT, WAR IN HUMAN CIVILIZATION (2006).
6
many perfectly legal relationships. He keeps her and controls her, and occasionally loses
small battles -- words that could be written about many marriages.
The point is not that The Collector’s theme is marriage-as-kidnap. For one thing,
the “problem” of control in relationships is hardly limited to marriage. Parents kidnap
their children, in a manner of speaking, and virtually all of us try to control our friends
and family (as well as employees, if any) on occasion. Criminal law is not unaware of the
danger of a broad definition of kidnap, and no legal system criminalizes power struggles
or tries to define and criminalize “excessive control over others,“ though this forms the
core of most understandings of kidnap, rape, bullying, discrimination, and enslavement.
Miranda insists that she was forced to Clegg’s place and is forced to remain; the law
takes these facts as reason to regard him as a criminal and her as a victim. But it is also
plain that many other victims do not meaningfully consent to the control exercised over
them by others. They, too, are like butterflies in a collection, though the law offers them
no help, which is to say about as much help as it offers the butterflies.
The Collector goes much further when it reveals Miranda’s diary. From the
perspective of control, her report is nearly as unsettling as Clegg’s narration. Her view of
love and her reasons for seeking a relationship with G.P. are not just shallow but
comparable to Clegg’s pursuit of her.11 Each wants a specimen from a higher social class;
each separates sex from love; each is a collector. To be sure, the parallel has its limits,
much as most controlling men do not go so far as to chloroform “their” women, or the
objects of their desire.
Miranda, like Clegg, wants approval, but hers must come from G.P. who
disapproves of everything about her, until slowly she changes her own tastes one at a
time until he wants her. Of course she never told G.P. that she finds him ugly and old.
She is now willing to have sex with G.P., and even to marry him, but only for
instrumental reasons. “I will give myself to G.P. He can have me. And whatever he does
to me I shall still have my woman-me he can never touch” (267). At first it is absurd to
think of Miranda’s interest in G.P., or his for her, as anything like Clegg’s for hers. There
must be a huge gap between manipulative seduction and forcible abduction. But is there?
Clegg uses force on a number of occasions, but he, like Miranda, is only occasionally
The symmetry point is advanced in Perry Nodelman, John Fowles’s Variations in The Collector, 28
Contemporary Literature 332-46 (1987). Nodelman notes that “Miranda’s obsession with G.P. strangely
parallels Clegg’s obsession with her . . . Miranda is herself a variation on Clegg . . . Miranda is as offended
by G.P.’s interest in sex – “his one horrid weakness” (150) – as Clegg is offended by her sexuality.”
Nodelman observes that both hate dirt and both collect. Despite her claim that she is no collector of men
(266), she says “I hated it when he went off to Italy like that, without telling me. Not because I was
seriously in love with him, but because he was vaguely mine, and didn’t get permission from me” (146).
11
7
dishonest. He lies about a dog in need of help in order to get her to look into his van, so
that he might abduct her. And then, later, he lies about mailing a contribution that she
has urged. Of course, he also breaks his promise to limit the captivity to one month,
though he might have intended to keep his word on that matter.
Remarkably, Clegg’s abduction of Miranda might not rise beyond wrongful
imprisonment to the level of kidnap. He demands no ransom and intends no other
felonies. It is arguable that he does her bodily harm, with his gags and chloroform, but
with a little lawyerly and poetic license it is also arguable that his methods fall short of
that requirement of some kidnap statutes and definitions.12 Thus, a nightclub hypnotist
who draws a mark onto the stage with false pretenses or without full disclosure, and then
blindfolds her and causes her to stumble out of the room only to return in a daze at the
end of the show with an undergarment on her head, would hardly be guilty of kidnap.
Clegg is certainly guilty of wrongful imprisonment, and while we have no doubt that he
would be convicted of kidnapping (and perhaps felony-murder), his actions come close
enough to the line to be interesting in this regard. In turn, the courtship between Miranda
and G.P. comes close to criminal fraud. She will profess love and offer sex, and we can
12
Kidnapping in the United States is usually defined by forcible confinement for one of several purposes,
including ransom, the commission of another felony, and the infliction of bodily harm upon or intent to
terrorize the victim or another person. Thus, in Minnesota, M.S.A. § 609.25:
Kidnapping.
Subdivision 1. Acts constituting. Whoever, for any of the following purposes, confines or removes from
one place to another, any person without the person's consent or, if the person is under the age of 16 years,
without the consent of the person's parents or other legal custodian, is guilty of kidnapping and may be
sentenced as provided in subdivision 2:
(1) to hold for ransom or reward for release, or as shield or hostage; or
(2) to facilitate commission of any felony or flight thereafter; or
(3) to commit great bodily harm or to terrorize the victim or another; or
(4) to hold in involuntary servitude.
Clegg can hardly be said to have intended to terrorize Miranda, and a lawyer might note that gags
and chloroform do not themselves inflict great or lasting bodily harm. Ironically, a prosecutor could argue
that Miranda’s worsening cold or flu must have been transmitted by him. Involuntary servitude is even
more of a stretch inasmuch as it was Clegg who tended to Miranda, and saw to the preparation of meals and
cleaning. If Clegg had taken Miranda across U.S. state lines, the broader Federal Kidnapping Act would
reach him with "Whoever unlawfully seizes, confines, inveigles, decoys, kidnaps, abducts, or carries away
and holds for ransom or reward or otherwise any person..." 18 U.S.C.A. § 1201 (italics added for
emphasis).
In The Collector’s home jurisdiction, kidnapping is defined at common law as the “taking or
carrying away of one person by another, by force or fraud, without the consent of the person taken or
carried away and without lawful excuse. It must involve an attack on or loss of that person’s liberty." It is
thus an aggravated form of false imprisonment, which includes every wrongful deprivation of a person’s
liberty. Both are common law offences with unlimited limits on imprisonment. See
http://lawcommission.justice.gov.uk/docs/cp200_kidnapping_consultation.pdf. Under this overbroad law,
Clegg can be convicted of the more serious offense, kidnapping, but so could a driver who deceived
someone into an excursion for a surprise birthday party.
8
be confident that he would reject these offers if he knew how unattractive she found him.
Her behavior will hardly be out of the ordinary because most relationships involve some
fraud, as the controlling party seeks to acquire admiration, sex, parenting skills,
housework, and much more. Clegg’s aims are chaste and his means are wrongful,
whether or not they amount to kidnapping, at least during the early days of captivity.
Miranda’s intentions are far more manipulative, and yet the tools she would deploy
would never lead to a fraud conviction. The lesson is not that Clegg’s behavior is normal
and undeserving of criminalization, but rather that many relationships involve control
over another through wrongful means – but we simply and unthinkingly regard those
means as normal and, certainly, as noncriminal.
*
*
*
Unlike terrorism, assassination, many murders, and perhaps political kidnaps,13
ransom kidnapping is a crime that the perpetrator is unlikely to regard as successful if he
or she is apprehended. Professional ransom kidnappers are virtually unknown in Britain
and in the United States.14 However well executed the abduction, the kidnapper faces the
difficult task of convincing someone to pay a ransom and then the more difficult task of
obtaining the ransom in a way that does not lead to apprehension, especially if the target
has involved the police. In films, the kidnapper sometimes instructs that the ransom be
flung from a moving train at a particular spot (to be communicated while the target is in
motion) or left in a public park in a trash pail to be identified by a caller to a public
telephone but, in most of these cases, the plot is flawed. The target must find the
kidnapper’s threat credible at several levels, and then must either face a separate credible
threat that serves to keep the police out of the picture or participate in an untraceable
payment scheme. There are ways to make threats more credible, but the problem of
ransom collection is usually insurmountable. Moreover, the two intersect. The kidnapper
can try to solve the second problem by holding the hostage until payment is safely
13
Politically motivated kidnappings are easier to execute because they do not involve a transfer of ransom
to the kidnapper. The authorities cannot track the kidnappers by following the ransom. The kidnappers
might want prisoners released or the government to agree to halt some policy, and none of these payoffs
give the government something to follow in order to find the wrongdoers. On the other hand, political
kidnappings suffer from “secondary credibility”; the government can see that that if it complies with the
demand, there are plenty more demands and hostages ahead.
14
They are known in a few countries where they abduct corporate executives and collect ransoms from
employers and, sometimes, from families. This crime often involves collusion, either with victims or with
police, and I set it aside here.
9
received and found to be in untraceable form, but this weakens the credibility of the
promise to release the hostage once payment is made. It should be noted that most threatmakers need to build primary credibility (“Comply with my demand or I will carry out an
act injurious to you.”) and also develop secondary credibility (“If you comply I can be
relied upon not to injure you anyway, and also not to repeat the threat for further gain,
now that you reveal that you are a complying type.”).15 In the case of kidnapping,
primary credibility is in doubt until the kidnap actually takes place. A criminal could
demand money by threatening to kidnap if no money is transferred, but most victims will
apparently prefer to take precautions and not give in to this threat. The threat of harming
the hostage is much greater, or simply more credible, once the nabbing is accomplished
or it is established that the kidnapper has abducted and proved credible on previous
occasions. At this point it is secondary credibility that is in doubt; the target needs to
believe that the hostage will be safe if the target complies – knowing that compliance will
be complicated by the kidnapper’s need to avoid apprehension.
The Collector deals with these matters brilliantly. From the outset, Clegg does not
abduct and imprison for money, but rather to gain affection, insight, love, or a specimen.
There will be no ransom for the police to track. Indeed, it becomes clear, to the reader
and then to Miranda, that there will be a tragic ending. After failing to convince Clegg
that if he simply lets her go she will tell no one and be his friend (35, 38), Miranda
bargains with her abductor and he promises that he will let her go after one month, but it
is plain that Clegg cannot keep his word. The fact that the parties bargain over the period
of captivity is itself interesting. When the abductor seeks affection, such bargaining is
plausible. The parties can be understood as earning one another’s trust. If they “agree” on
a time period, then perhaps each appears more trustworthy; negotiators and hostagetakers often try just such a step, establishing some small exchange so that each can see
that the other is in control of events on one side and then the other. The sub-bargain also
promotes trust – to a degree. Clegg might think that Miranda has implicitly agreed to be
cooperative and even to see whether she can feel affection for him in return for the
promise that if she does not like him within the month, the experiment is over. He thinks
that abducting her “was the best thing I ever did in in my life” (28), and that “I wasn’t
really worried, I knew my love was worthy of her (27). When, for example, she asks to
be allowed out of her cellar room to bathe upstairs and says “If I gave you my word, I
wouldn’t break it,” he responds and observes: “I’m sure. . . . So that was that” (48).
15
Credibility is explored in Saul Levmore & Ariel Porat, Credible Threats (forthcoming 2014) (available
from author).
10
Bargaining is more difficult when the kidnapper threatens death unless a ransom
or other favor is received. The target might say explicitly or implicitly, “Lower your
demand from $3 million to $1 million, and I will gather the funds and not go to the
police. At the higher price I will take my chances with the police.” Miranda’s bargain
over the period of captivity is just such a bargain. It is not like one where the kidnapper
demands $1 million, the target accedes, and then the kidnapper raises the demand to $2
million. Nor is it like one where the parties agree on $1 million, and then the target tries
to reduce the ransom. These last two maneuvers lead to distrust as the parties can see that
re-opening the terms after apparent agreement destabilizes whatever bargain they reach. 16
Miranda’s one-month bargain preceded any quasi-agreement to cooperate.
Any promise that Miranda makes not to go to the police is incredible, and she has
no extra hostage to leave behind. This is especially clear once Clegg finds out that
Miranda recognizes him. It will be impossible to relocate and escape detection. Clegg
might imagine a happy ending even after he is recognized. He might reason that if
Miranda comes to know him and love him, as would be most unlikely in London where
their class differences would keep them apart, then she will no longer seek to escape. He
might imagine that she will truly accept his proposal of marriage and then, after some
time, they can rejoin the world and say that she ran off with him in order to spend time
together. Their elopement would seem romantic rather than criminal. In turn, his implied
threat is that she must fall in love with him or be his prisoner forever, unless death
intervenes, as of course it does. He knows he will not kill her and that having her is like
“catching a specimen you wanted . . . coming up slowly behind and you had it, but you
had to nip the thorax, and it would be quivering there. It wasn’t easy like it was with a
killing-bottle. And it was twice as difficult with her, because I didn’t want to kill her, that
was the last thing I wanted” (39). On the other hand, once he proposes marriage and she
explains or frustrates him by saying that marriage, to her, requires mutual possession, and
that she could never give herself to him, the bargaining atmosphere changes. “I said, that
changes everything then, doesn’t it. I stood up, my head was throbbing. She knew what I
meant at once, I could see it in her face, but she pretended not to understand” (89). And
then, having understood that she will never be released, she gives it a try: “l’ll marry you.
I’ll marry you as soon as you like” (89). But now “I don’t trust you half an inch, I said.”
The way she was looking at me really made me sick” (90). A month has now passed and
she sees that she is doomed. It is too late to feign love or a willingness to marry.
16
See Levmore & Porat, at __.
11
The secondary credibility problem inherent in ransom kidnapping is not avoided
by the novel’s lepidopetric device. The butterfly collector wants a new specimen or even
affection, rather than ransom, but in true law-and-economics fashion the reader might
imagine that every collector has a price at which he can be induced to part with his catch.
We learn that Miranda’s father is a doctor, but there is otherwise no indication of the
Grey family’s ability to pay an amount sufficient to cause Clegg to change course. In any
event, Clegg has acquired funds through gambling, and no modest ransom will appeal to
him, inasmuch as he has rather simple tastes. When he plans his next kidnap it is, again,
of someone who will not command a significant ransom.
Miranda reasons that Clegg may want sex rather than money. She is willing to
trade sex for her freedom (99). Some abductors aim for sex of course; we penalize them
as rapists. Their strategy is usually to hide their identities, to vanish after the crime, or to
frighten the victim so much that she will choose not to report the crime or not to assist in
the rapist’s capture. The last strategy seems most effective with minors or family
members; most victims will feel more threatened by a rapist on the loose. Clegg is
repulsed by Miranda’s offer, and yet more horrified when she tries to seduce him (105).
He never sought loveless sex and now regards her as inferior to the woman he fantasized
about and stalked. More generally, it is not credible for a victim of kidnapping to offer
sex in exchange for freedom. If the abductor wanted sex, there would likely have been a
rape and an attempt at anonymity. If non-anonymous, the kidnapper-rapist anticipates a
long period of captivity. Once recognized, the victim has no way of making a credible
promise to refrain from turning in the kidnapper for the crimes of kidnap and rape.
Clegg’s negative reaction to her sex-for-freedom offer is made more interesting
by the fact that it follows closely on the heels of his complimenting a drawing she
rendered, and then offering to buy it (60-61, 131). She finds this mad and it is, to be sure,
strange. If Clegg thinks of her as a guest on the way to a mutually affectionate
relationship, he should ask politely for the creation, but not offer to pay. Moreover, why
would an abductor ever pay a victim for an asset when both are in his control? Clegg may
be trying to convince her that he expects that she will have a life after this captivity.
Miranda toys with him and then refuses his offer and tears up the artwork. When he is
repulsed by her offer of sex, it is clearer why she was similarly put off by his offer for the
drawing. Each sought to commodify something the other regarded as precious and
beyond trade. And, of course, the horror and criminality of kidnap itself reflects the view
that human life and liberty are beyond commercial exchange.
As Miranda comprehends that Clegg wants neither money nor sex, she resorts to
the interesting, if unspoken, threat that she will starve herself to death (110). It is not
12
simply that she threatens her abductor with a murder conviction, if the felonious
abduction leads to her death, but also that she understands his need for company,
affection, or collection. Presuming that he wants a live specimen, she reasons that as she
diminishes her value as his hostage, he will be more inclined to end the hostage-keeping,
inasmuch as it is costly for him to continue. Miranda’s tactic is of the scorched-earth
kind, and it is clever. The novel has us wondering why kidnap victims do not try this
strategy. Perhaps this is why many kidnappers choose children, who can be counted on to
eat, rather than starve themselves, in the interest of short term preservation or other goals.
When the kidnapping is of an adult, it is often to extract ransom or other benefit from a
company or government, so that the person who is abducted has an incentive to improve
rather than lessen his or her value as a hostage. In the case of hostages taken in order to
compel the target to undertake some action, the abductor is often a professional agent of a
sophisticated organization capable of force-feeding the hostage. Clegg is unlikely to have
the means and knowledge to do the same. If kidnap victims tried this scorched-earth
strategy, kidnappers would probably plan to force feed them. Why then does Miranda end
the starvation plan? Perhaps she has thought of using violence against Clegg, as she will
soon do; in a weakened state she is less likely to succeed and escape. Perhaps she has
already planned to offer sex or marriage in return for freedom. Miranda must understand
Clegg’s dilemma; if she does not develop affection for him, she cannot live, unless he
loves her enough to suffer the consequences or end his own life. The latter possibility
might have been viable in the early days of captivity. But once she repulses him with foul
language and later with the offer of loveless sex, it will be clear that he does not like her
enough to sacrifice his life or liberty for hers.
How else might the captivity end, if there is to be neither love nor ransom? Clegg
has the idea of holding another threat over her, so that if he releases her, or even if she
escapes, she will not turn him in. His notion is to take obscene photos. “I got to protect
myself. I want some photos of you what you would be ashamed to let anyone else see”
(113). She recoils at his suggestion that she re-enact her attempted seduction. But Clegg
is more prudish than Miranda, and he can reason that the existence of these photos, even
if she were to pose or he were to force her into suitable position, would not prevent her
from going to the authorities if she escapes or is freed. Perhaps he understands enough
about university students, worldly enough to keep up with artistic trends and to protest
the H-bomb, to know that a few pictures will hardly keep her quiet. Miranda might have
tried to convince Clegg that pictures would indeed be enough to keep her from turning
him in. She might, for example, have tried to outsmart her captor by writing in her diary
that the photos frightened her, and that she hoped Clegg did not realize this because she
13
would do anything in return for his promise not to release them. She could then allow
him to discover her diary. Similarly, she might have written that she was wanted for
murder in another jurisdiction and so could not go to the police even if she escaped.
When Clegg found the diary with this planted information, it is possible that he would
have thought he had a way out of the situation. Similarly, if she had written about some
medical condition and then later feigned appropriate symptoms, she might have gained
the upper hand. Miranda shows no such creativity, though she is “clever” and won prizes
in school, and saw right through Clegg’s opening yarn about his working for someone
else (33). In any event, the medical condition gambit is difficult to deploy; Clegg would
head into town for the necessary medicine and likely find some holes in her story.
Clegg likes the photos he takes of her seated and dressed in their early days
together. But when he gets around to taking the sort of photos she refused, he likes them
better after he cuts her head from them (118). Might this make her more like a butterfly
specimen? Might the gag visible on her mouth make the lack of consent apparent, and the
threat less valuable? Could he think that headless photos will be less valuable evidence
against him in the future? Each of these is plausible and provocative. Each suggests the
connection between kidnap and blackmail, and suffers from problems of secondary
credibility.
*
*
*
The Collector is on to something when it toys with the idea of putting a second
threat in the kidnapper’s hands. There is the implicit threat of death and then the threat of
releasing photos or terrorizing her in London after her release. It happens that none of
these threats is especially credible. The first suffers from secondary incredibility. Clegg
says he wants her to get to know him and possibly to love him, but she cannot
convincingly offer that. He might have imagined that once she loved him, the kidnapping
would be successful because she would become his companion and have no interest in
turning on him. But as he begins to see that love is out of reach, whether because there is
too much of a class division between them or for some other reason, he cannot trust any
claim of affection. If she dies and he disposes of the body, it is possible that the
disappearance will never be solved. If she escapes or is released, there is the danger that
she will report the crime, lead the police to him, and end his life as a collector. The
photographs form an insufficient threat. Even if she could act as if the prospect of their
release would be enough to keep her quiet, Clegg must recognize that she will fear that he
will demand more in the future, and that she will never be safe. He has already broken his
14
word about the one-month limit on her captivity, and they both understand that neither
can trust the other. Similarly, she hints at the possibility that from time to time he could
see her in London after her release, but they both perceive that she could use such
occasions to have him apprehended. Both parties suffer from secondary incredibility.
The idea of a backup threat does not seem to appeal to kidnappers. Thus, imagine
a creative kidnapper who abducts two siblings. The criminal demands a ransom and
promises to release one hostage upon receipt of the ransom, and the other some time later
when it is clear that the ransom is safely received and that the target has not involved the
police. The kidnapper could be long gone and simply send a message regarding the
second hostage’s location. In theory the plan does not require two hostages, but the
release of the first hostage surely adds to the kidnapper’s credibility. Indeed, the
kidnapper might repeat the crime with other targets, and suggest they inquire of the
previous target in order to learn that the kidnapper was reliable in releasing the first and
then the second hostage. Of course, nabbing and holding two hostages requires more
effort on the kidnapper’s part. The Collector twice hints at such a credibility-enhancing
strategy, though not at the double kidnapping strategy. First, in an inept opening gambit,
Clegg tells Miranda that he works for someone who is a serial kidnapper (29-31). As the
novel ends, we can imagine Clegg asking his next victim whether she remembers reading
about a missing art student. He might even show her evidence of his earlier crime. With
each new specimen, the collector becomes more credible. Second, when Clegg
contemplates acquiring a new specimen, we recall that when first stalking Miranda he
observes that “she and her younger sister used to go in and out a lot” (3). There is a
moment when one wonders whether he will move on to the sister, until we recognize that
once he attributes his failure to social class divisions, the sister is probably safe.
*
*
*
The Collector is a haunting novel from two perspectives. At its unsettling best, it
suggests that the lower class man’s forcible crime, that collector of butterflies who treats
a woman like an insect or pet, may not be so very different from the educated person’s
deceits. Miranda is as much a collector as is Clegg. The perspective is more provocative
than convincing and, unfortunately, few readers seem to remember Miranda’s
relationship with, and plans for, G.P.17 Perhaps we readers are too quick to take comfort
17
Unsurprisingly, but unfortunately, the prize-winning film version of The Collector (1965), includes
nothing of Miranda’s plans for other men, and none of her narration. There are too many other adaptation
15
in the dividing line constructed of chloroform and gags. It is Clegg’s narrative in The
Collector that is iconic, though I have suggested that Miranda’s diary that is yet more
provocative. The second perspective emphasizes the mechanics of a successful kidnap. It
is not an easy crime and, once begun, its threats and counter-threats spin out of control. In
this respect the novel succeeds the moment the reader understands that a happy ending is
impossible.
decisions to detail, but it is noteworthy that the film has Miranda quickly “accepting” Clegg’s marriage
proposal, and then Clegg backing off because he has no witnesses and, presumably, because he knows her
promise is not credible.
16